Could it be that the teaching profession isn’t pink enough?

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Published: Monday, 09 March 2015 14:09

Morethan three-quarters of U.S. public school teachers are female. So it’s a bit surprising to hear an argument that there aren’t enough women in the profession. It’s kind of like saying there aren’t enough lawyers in Washington. But that’s exactly the case that two new research studies make for what’s needed to produce more women scientists and engineers in this country.

The studies suggest that if there were more female math and science teachers in middle and high school, more girls would study these subjects in college, and that providing female role models earlier in life — before students get to college — might be one of the more effective ways to encourage more girls to pursue higher level math and science. (“Science” broadly refers to all the hard sciences from computer science and physics to chemistry and engineering).

The Classroom Racial Gap Hits an All-Time High

Minority students became the majority this year, but most teachers are still white. Policymakers are seeking for ways to get and keep more minority teachers.

When Aliyah Cook was in the third grade, she wrote a letter to the principal of her suburban Denver school, asking why the school had no black teachers. Now a junior high student, Cook is getting a response -- only this time it’s from state lawmakers.

The Colorado Legislature last year passed Aliyah’s Law, which called for a study of diversity in the state’s education workforce. What the newly released report found was that while 43 percent of Colorado schoolkids are minorities, only 10 percent of the state’s teachers are. That’s a problem, according to the report: “A major challenge in the U.S. education system, including Colorado’s education system, is the mismatch between the racial and ethnic diversity of the nation’s overall student population and that of the teacher workforce.”

If You Want to Be the Boss, Say “We” Not “I”

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Published: Monday, 09 March 2015 11:49

The royal “we” has a long and interesting history. Many attribute its first usage to King Henry II, who in 1169 used it to imply he was speaking for both himself, and for God. Overtime, leaders began to use it to imply them and their constituents (a distinction that got a little blurry when Margaret Thatcher proclaimed “we have become a grandmother” and got a significant amount of chastisement). But beyond using the plural pronoun to indicate that you speak on behalf of a others (or deity), it turns out that using “we” could also mean you’re more considerate of others and possibly even a better leader.

A team of researchers – Ewa Kacewicz, James W. Pennebaker, Matthew Davis, Moongee Jeon, and Arthur C. Graesser — studied the use of pronouns by individuals in a variety of contexts. Their theory was that pronoun usages (first-, second- or third-person and singular versus plural) could provide clues to an individual’s status inside a group or a hierarchy and possibly their likelihood of attaining higher status.

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